ONLINE SHOPPING

By

CHAITANYA REDDY MITTAPELLI

B.E., Osmania University, 2005

A REPORT

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree

MASTER OF SCIENCE

Department of Computing and Information Sciences

College of Engineering

KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY

Manhattan, Kansas

2008

Approved By:

Major Professor

DANIEL ANDRESEN Ph.D.

ABSTRACT

The Online Shopping is a web based application intended for online retailers. The main

objective of this application is to make it interactive and its ease of use. It would make

searching, viewing and selection of a product easier. It contains a sophisticated search

engine for user's to search for products specific to their needs. The search engine provides

an easy and convenient way to search for products where a user can Search for a product

interactively and the search engine would refine the products available based on the

user’s input. The user can then view the complete specification of each product. They can

also view the product reviews and also write their own reviews. The application also

provides a drag and drop feature so that a user can add a product to the shopping cart by

dragging the item in to the shopping cart. The main emphasis lies in providing a user-

friendly search engine for effectively showing the desired results and its drag and drop

behavior.

.

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements............................................................................................................. v

1. Introduction..................................................................................................................... 1

1.1 Goal........................................................................................................................... 1

1.2 Need of the application ............................................................................................. 1

1.3 Scope......................................................................................................................... 2

1.4 Platform Specifications – Deployment ..................................................................... 2

1.4.1 Hardware Specification...................................................................................... 2

1.4.2 Software Specification ....................................................................................... 3

2. System Requirement Analysis ........................................................................................ 3

2.1 Information Gathering .............................................................................................. 3

2.2 System Feasibility..................................................................................................... 4

2.2.1 Economic Feasibility ......................................................................................... 4

2.2.2 Technical Feasibility.......................................................................................... 4

2.2.3 Behavioral Feasibility ........................................................................................ 4

3. System Analysis.............................................................................................................. 5

3.1 ER Diagram .............................................................................................................. 5

3.2 Data Flow Diagram................................................................................................... 6

3.3 Use case Diagram ................................................................................................... 10

3.4 Class Diagram......................................................................................................... 11

4. Design ........................................................................................................................... 11

4.1 Design Goals........................................................................................................... 11

4.2Architectural Design ................................................................................................ 12

4.2.1Architectural Context Diagram......................................................................... 12

4.2.2 Description of Architectural Design ................................................................ 12

4.3 Procedural/Modular Approach................................................................................ 13

4.3.1 Shop Products Module..................................................................................... 13

4.3.2 Product Description Module ............................................................................ 13

4.3.3 Cart Details Module......................................................................................... 13

5. Implementation ............................................................................................................. 14

5.1 Database Design and Implementation .................................................................... 14

5.2 User Interface Design and Implementation ............................................................ 15

5.3 Technical Discussions............................................................................................. 19

6. Testing........................................................................................................................... 19

6.1 Unit Testing ............................................................................................................ 19

6.2 Integration Testing .................................................................................................. 20

6.3 Validation Testing................................................................................................... 21

6.4 White Box Testing .................................................................................................. 22

6.5 Performance Testing ............................................................................................... 22

7. Results & Challenges.................................................................................................... 24

7.1 Challenges............................................................................................................... 25

iv

8. Conclusions................................................................................................................... 25

8.1 Limitations .............................................................................................................. 25

8.2 Scope for Future Work............................................................................................ 26

9. References..................................................................................................................... 27

v

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my major professor Dr. Daniel Andresen for his

constant guidance and help throughout the project. I would also like to thank Dr. Torben

Amtoft and Dr. Mitchell Neilsen for graciously accepting to be on my committee.

Finally, I would like to thank my family and my friends for all the support and

encouragement.

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1. Introduction

1.1 Goal

Shopping has long been considered a recreational activity by many. Shopping online is

no exception. The goal of this application is to develop a web based interface for online

retailers. The system would be easy to use and hence make the shopping experience

pleasant for the users. The goal of this application is

• To develop an easy to use web based interface where users can search for

products, view a complete description of the products and order the products.

• A search engine that provides an easy and convenient way to search for products

specific to their needs. The search engine would list a set of products based on the

search term and the user can further filter the list based on various parameters.

• An AJAX enabled website with the latest AJAX controls giving attractive and

interactive look to the web pages and prevents the annoying post backs.

• Drag and Drop feature which would allow the users to add a product to or remove

a product from the shopping cart by dragging the product in to the shopping cart

or out of the shopping cart.

• A user can view the complete specification of the product along with various

images and also view the customer reviews of the product. They can also write

their own reviews.

1.2 Need of the application

There are large numbers of commercial Online Shopping websites offering large number

of products tailored to meet the shopping interests of large number of customers. These

online marketplaces have thousands of products listed under various categories.

Problem:

• The basic problems with the existing systems are the non-interactive environment

they provide to the users.

• The use of traditional user interfaces which make continuous post backs to the

server; each post back makes a call to the server, gets the response and then

refreshes the entire web form to display the result. This scenario adds an extra

trade off causing a delay in displaying the results

• A search engine that would display the results without allowing the users to

further filter the results based on various parameters.

• Use of traditional and non user friendly interfaces that are hard to use

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Solution:

• The motive of this Online Shopping Web Application is to allow the user to play

with the search tool and create different combinatorial search criterion to perform

exhaustive search.

• Making the application AJAX enabled gets rid of these unnecessary delays letting

the user to perform exhaustive search. The users of this application can easily feel

the difference between the Ajax empowered user interfaces vs. traditional user

interfaces.

• Provide Interactive interface through which a user can interact with different areas

of application easily.

• A search engine that provides an easy and convenient way to search for products

specific to their needs. The search engine would list a set of products based on the

search term and the user can further filter the list based on various parameters.

• Provide Drag and Drop feature thereby allowing the user to add products to or

remove products from the shopping cart by dragging the products in to or out of

the shopping cart.

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1.3 Scope

• The current system can be extended to allow the users to create accounts and

save products in to wish list.

• The users could subscribe for price alerts which would enable them to receive

messages when price for products fall below a particular level.

• The current system is confined only to the shopping cart process. It can be

extended to have a easy to use check out process.

• Users can have multiple shipping and billing information saved. During

checkout they can use the drag and drop feature to select shipping and billing

information.

1.4 Platform Specifications – Deployment

1.4.1 Hardware Specification

Processor P IV

RAM 250 MB

Minimum Space Required 100 MB

Display 16 bit color

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1.4.2 Software Specification

Operating Environment Win 2000/XP

Platform .Net Framework & IIS Visual Studio 2008

Database SQL Server 2005

2. System Requirement Analysis

2.1 Information Gathering

As the goal of the application is ease of use and to provide an interactive

interface, extensive research has been done to gain an insight into the needs and

behaviors of various users. The working of the application is made convenient and easy

to use for the end user. Dr Andresen, Associate Professor, CIS provided regular feedback

on the project.

Users can be classified into two types based on their knowledge of the products

that suit their needs. They can be classified as users who know about the product that

would satisfy their needs and users who have to figure out the product that would satisfy

their needs. Users who know about the product should be able to find the product easily

with the click of a button. Such users can search for the product by using the product

name as the search term. Users who have to figure out the product that would satisfy their

needs could use a search term to find a list of products and then should be able to filter

the results based on various parameters like product type, manufacturer, price range,

platform supported etc.

The users should be able to view the complete specification of the product and

various images at different Zoom levels. The user should be able to read the customer

reviews for the product and the ratings provided. They should be able to write their own

reviews. They should be able to print out the specifications for a product or email the

product page to a friends etc.

To increase the ease of use the user should be able to add a product to the

shopping cart by dragging a product and dropping it in the shopping cart. A user should

able to edit the contents of a shopping cart. They should be able to update the quantities

of the products added to the cart and remove the products from the cart. The user should

be able to remove the product from the shopping cart by dragging the product and

dropping it outside the cart.

The application can be made interactive by pop up messages when a product has

been dropped in to the shopping cart or out of the shopping cart. The user can be notified

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if the cursor enters a drop area and the object that could be dropped. Also users are

impatient making it important to load pages soon.

Other than this, I did a lot of research on various other methods of building this

application which and was able to incorporate a few stronger features into the application.

The tools and controls used in the application are recommended ASP.NET controls and

AJAX Toolkit controls which improves the navigation and usability and interactivity.

2.2 System Feasibility

The system feasibility can be divided into the following sections:

2.2.1 Economic Feasibility

The project is economically feasible as the only cost involved is having a

computer with the minimum requirements mentioned earlier. For the users to access the

application, the only cost involved will be in getting access to the Internet.

2.2.2 Technical Feasibility

To deploy the application, the only technical aspects needed are mentioned below:

Operating Environment Win 2000/XP

Platform .Net Framework & IIS

Database SQL Server 2005

For Users:

Internet Browser

Internet Connection

2.2.3 Behavioral Feasibility

The application requires no special technical guidance and all the views available

in the application are self explanatory. The users are well guided with warning and failure

messages for all the actions taken.

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3. System Analysis

After carefully analyzing the requirements and functionality of the web

application, I had two important diagrams by the end of the analysis phase. They are the

ER diagram and data flow diagram which were the basis for finding out entities and

relationships between them, the flow of information.

3.1 ER Diagram

Figure 3.1 Entity Relation Ship Diagram

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3.2 Data Flow Diagram

Figure 3.2: A Context Level Diagram

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Figure 3.3: A First Level Diagram

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Figure 3.4: A Second Level Diagram

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Figure 3.5: A Second Level Diagram

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3.3 Use Case Diagram

Figure 3.6: Use Case Diagram

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3.4 Class Diagram

Figure 3.7: Class Diagram

4. Design

4.1 Design Goals

• The design of the web application involves the design of the forms for listing the

products, search for products, display the complete specification for the product,

and design a shopping cart that is easy to use.

• Design of an interactive application that enables the user to filter the products

based on different parameters.

• Design of an application that has features like drag and drop etc.

• Design of application that decreases data transfers between the client and the

server.

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4.2Architectural Design

4.2.1Architectural Context Diagram

Figure 4.1 Architectural Context Diagram

4.2.2 Description of Architectural Design

In this context diagram, the information provided to and received from the

‘Online Shopping’ is identified. The arrows represent the information received or

generated by the application. The closed boxes represent the set of sources and sinks of

information.

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In the system, we can observe that the user interacts with the application through

a graphical user interface. The inputs to the system are the Search and Filter criteria

provided by the user and a new review written by the user. Also, the output is in the form

of Repeater and grid views which present the users with list of Products available. The

users can view complete specification, view Images and reviews by other users.

4.3 Procedural/Modular Approach

Following are all the modules designed for the Online Shopping System.

4.3.1 Shop Products Module

This module starts when the user visits the home page or when a user searches for

a product by entering a search term. This part of the application includes displaying all

the products that are available or the products that match the search term entered by the

user. The user can then filter these products based on various parameters like

manufacturer, product type, operating system supported or a price range. The user browse

through the products and each product would be displayed with an image and its features

like operating system supported, number of user licenses and if it is a full version or an

upgrade version. A user can add a product to the cart either by dragging the product and

dropping it in the cart or by clicking a button. The user would be able to see the shopping

cart summary.

4.3.2 Product Description Module

This module starts when a user visits the product description page. A user can

view various images of the product of different sizes. The use can see an enlarged image

in a popup window. The user can view the complete specification of the product like its

features, operating system supported, system requirements etc. A user can also view the

manufacturer information and also information about rebates, exchange policies etc. A

user can also view the reviews of the product. A user can also write a review for the

product.

4.3.3 Shopping Cart Module

This module starts when the user views the shopping cart. All the products that

have been added to the shopping cart by the user are listed along with their price and the

quantity. The total price of all the products added to cart is displayed. A user can edit the

quantity of each product or remove the product from the shopping cart. A user can

remove the product from the cart by clicking a button or by dragging the product and

dropping it outside the cart. The total price changes accordingly when a user edits the

quantity of a product or when a product is removed from the cart.

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5. Implementation

5.1 Database Design and Implementation

The design of the database was similar to the analysis phase. The database has been

developed using SQL Server 2005.

Figure 5.1 Database Implementation using SQL Server 2005

These are the main tables in the application and others are lookup and query tables. The

tables were derived from the ER-Diagram.

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5.2 User Interface Design and Implementation

The user interface of the application has been designed using Microsoft Visual

Studio 2008. The main controls used in the design are Repeaters, Ajax Update panels,

Ajax toolkit controls like modal popup, textbox watermark and Auto complete controls.

Figure 5.2 Shop Products Page

The user can see the list of products that are available. The user can search for

products by entering the search term into the search textbox provided on the top. This text

box is watermarked with the words “Search Terms” to let the user know that this is the

place to enter the search terms. The user can filter the products by using the dropdown

lists.

A user can drag and drop a product in the shopping cart. This is shown in the figure

5.3. The cart is updated accordingly as shown in figure 5.4

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Figure 5.3 Figure showing Drag and Drop a product in the cart

Figure 5.4 figure showing that Cart has been Updated

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A user can view the complete description of the product by clicking on the product link.

This is shown in figure 5.5. The user can move the cursor on to the small images to view

the same image in the enlarged position. The user can click on the enlarged picture to see

a still bigger image in a pop up window as shown Figure 5.6

Figure 5.5 Product Description Page

Figure 5.6 Pop up window showing an enlarged Image

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A user can also write a review by clicking on the write review tab panel as shown in

figure 5.7. Similarly a user can click on the tab panel customer reviews, specifications,

manufacturer Info etc to see the respective information.

Figure 5.7 Write Review Panel

The user can click on the Go to cart button to see the Items in the cart as shown in figure

5.8. The Summary is at the bottom of the page.

Figure 5.8 Cart Details Page

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5.3 Technical Discussions

The products can be filtered based on various parameters like Manufacturer,

Product Type, Operating System supported etc. Initially it was decided to have the

various list items predefined. But with time new manufacturers and product types could

be added. So the values for the list of manufacturers and product types are loaded

dynamically by retrieving from the database. Also it was decided initially to have a drop

down list for price range and the user could select a price range from the ranges available.

But this would limit the user’s ability to filter the products based on different price

ranges. Instead providing two text fields so that the user can enter their price range would

give them more flexibility.

A product could be added to a shopping cart by dragging it and dropping it in the cart

area. Items in the cart could be removed by clicking a button. To maintain symmetry and

ease of use products could be removed from the cart by dragging the product out of the

cart.

A product can be added to the cart by dragging it and dropping it in the cart.

Initially it was decided that when a product is dropped in the cart the cart summary label

could be updated on the client side without any call to the server and later the session

variables (Shopping cart) could be updated. This would result in loss of information when

the user loses internet connection. So when a product is dropped in the cart area a web

service is called and this service updates the session variables for the shopping cart and

the cart summary is recalculated and sent back to the client. This would improve the

reliability of the application.

6. Testing

Software testing is a process of running with intent of finding errors in software.

Software testing assures the quality of software and represents final review of other

phases of software like specification, design, code generation etc.

6.1 Unit Testing

Unit testing emphasizes the verification effort on the smallest unit of software

design i.e.; a software component or module. Unit testing is a dynamic method for

verification, where program is actually compiled and executed. Unit testing is performed

in parallel with the coding phase. Unit testing tests units or modules not the whole

software.

I have tested each view/module of the application individually. As the modules

were built up testing was carried out simultaneously, tracking out each and every kind of

input and checking the corresponding output until module is working correctly.

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The functionality of the modules was also tested as separate units. Each of the

three modules was tested as separate units. In each module all the functionalities were

tested in isolation.

In the Shop Products Module when a product has been added to cart it has been

made sure that if the item already exists in the shopping cart then the quantity is increased

by one else a new item is created in the shopping cart. Also the state of the system after a

product has been dragged in to the shopping cart is same as the state of the system if it

was added by clicking the add to cart button. Also it has been ensured that all the images

of the products displayed in the shop products page are drag gable and have the product

property so that they can be dropped in the cart area.

In the Product Description Module it has been tested that all the images are

displayed properly. Users can add review and the as soon as a user adds a review it is

updated in the view customer review tab. It has been checked to see if the whole page

refreshes or a partial page update happens when a user writes a review.

In the Cart Details it has been tested that when a user edits a quantity or removes

a product from the cart, the total price is updated accordingly. It has been checked to see

if the whole page refreshes or a partial page update happens when a user edits the cart.

Visual Studio 2008 has in built support for testing the application. The unit testing

can be done using visual studio 2008 without the need of any external application.

Various methods have been created for the purpose of unit testing. Test cases are

automatically generated for these methods. The tests run under the ASP.NET context

which means settings from Web.config file are automatically picked up once the test case

starts running.

Methods were written to retrieve all the manufacturers from the database,

strings that match a certain search term, products that match certain filter criteria, all

images that belong to a particular product etc. Unit test cases were automatically

generated for these methods and it can be seen in figure 6.1 that the tests have passed.

6.2 Integration Testing

In integration testing a system consisting of different modules is tested for

problems arising from component interaction. Integration testing should be developed

from the system specification. Firstly, a minimum configuration must be integrated and

tested.

In my project I have done integration testing in a bottom up fashion i.e. in this

project I have started construction and testing with atomic modules. After unit testing the

modules are integrated one by one and then tested the system for problems arising from

component interaction.

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Figure 6.1 Unit Testing in Visual Studio 2008

6.3 Validation Testing

It provides final assurances that software meets all functional, behavioral & performance

requirement. Black box testing techniques are used.

There are three main components

- Validation test criteria (no. in place of no. & char in place of char)

- Configuration review (to ensure the completeness of s/w configuration.)

- Alpha & Beta testing-Alpha testing is done at developer’s site i.e. at home & Beta

testing once it is deployed. Since I have not deployed my application, I could not do the

Beta testing.

Test Cases- I have used a number of test cases for testing the product. There were

different cases for which different inputs were used to check whether desired output is

produced or not.

1. Addition of a new product to the cart should create a new row in the shopping

cart.

2. Addition of an existing product to the cart has to update the quantity of the

product.

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3. Any changes to items in the cart have to update the summary correctly.

4. Because same page is inserting data into more than one table in the database

atomicity of the transaction is tested.

5. The state of the system after a product has been dragged in to the cart should be

same as the state of the system if the same product is added to the cart by clicking

a button.

6.4 White Box Testing

In white box testing knowing the internal working of the product, tests can be

conducted to ensure that internal operations are performed according to specification and

all internal components have been adequately exercised. In white box testing logical path

through the software are tested by providing test cases that exercise specific sets of

conditions and loops.

Using white-box testing software developer can derive test case that

• Guarantee that all independent paths within a module have been exercised at least once.

• Exercise all logical decisions on their true and false side.

• Exercise all loops at their boundaries and within their operational bound.

• Exercise internal data structure to ensure their validity.

At every stage of project development I have tested the logics of the program by

supplying the invalid inputs and generating the respective error messages. All the loops

and conditional statements are tested to the boundary conditions and validated properly.

6.5 Performance Testing

Jakarta JMeter, a tool for testing applications was used to simulate the virtual users

(clients) and test the performance of the system. It can be used to test performance both

on static and dynamic resources (files, Servlets, Perl scripts, Java Objects, Data Bases

and Queries, FTP Servers and more). It can be used to simulate a heavy load on a server,

network or object to test its strength or to analyze overall performance under different

load types. It can be used to make a graphical analysis of performance and test the

server/script/object behavior under heavy concurrent load.

I have done performance testing to achieve an estimate of the peak and sustained load the

application. This has done with few pages like the Shop Products (extensive Database

access, business logic Intensive and more Images) and the Cart Details (simple page). A

few sample Screenshots of test results are shown below. The tests have been conducted

by running the application (server) and JMeter on same machine. These test results do not

include factors like network bandwidth etc as the server is running on the same machine

along with JMeter.

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Figure 6.3 Summary Reports for 100 Users and 600 Loop Count for Cart Details Page

Comparison of Constant Users vs. Constant Loop-Count

In the following test, the number of users has been kept constant and the Loop Count has

been increased.

Users Loop Count Ramp Up period(sec) Cart Details Page

Average Response(ms)

100 150 10 1060

100 300 10 1071

100 600 10 1021

100 1000 10 1033

The above data shows high response average which increases with the loop count.

Observations

Response Time increases rapidly with number of users but not very much when the users

are kept constant and only loop-count is increased. This is because, if the number of users

is kept constant and only the loop count is increased, the number of requests handled by

the server per second remains constant for every execution of the loop count and for

every increase in the loop count. Hence the response time will not increase drastically in

this case. Whereas, if the users are increased and loop count is kept constant, the requests

handled by the server per second increases with increasing users and hence the longer

response time.

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Comparison of Response Times of the 2 WebPages

Local Testing:

Users Loop Count Ramp Up

period(sec)

Cart Details

Page(ms)

Shop Products

page(ms)

100 150 10 1060 28177

500 150 10 8075 105388

1000 150 10 11993 135273

Observations:

Response Time of a complex webpage with database and business logic functions is far

more than a simple webpage.

Factors affecting Response Time:

• Limited System Hardware Resources (CPU, RAM, Disks) and Configuration

• JMeter Tests and Application running on the same machine.

Remote Testing:

Users Loop Count Ramp Up

period(sec)

Cart Details

Page(ms)

Shop Products

page(ms)

100 150 10 792 8312

500 150 10 6392 99069

1000 150 10 20457 227056

Observations:

Response Time of a complex webpage with database and business logic functions is far

more than a simple webpage. The Response times of remote testing are better than those

of local testing when the number of users is comparatively lesser.

Factors affecting Response Time:

• Better Hardware Resources (CPU, RAM, Disks) and Configuration for the

Application as it was hosted on a web server.

• JMeter had better access to hardware resources as the application is not on the

same machine.

Using this above tabular data, I can say that the system is adequate to handle the normal

load and the users won’t lose their focus.

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7. Results & Challenges

The application can be used for any Ecommerce application. It is easy to use, since it

uses the GUI provided in the user dialog. User friendly screens are provided. The

application is easy to use and interactive making online shopping a recreational

activity for users. It has been thoroughly tested and implemented.

7.1 Challenges

• Compatibility with browsers like Mozilla Firefox, Internet explorer etc

• Using a layered approach in developing the application which would make the

application maintainable.

• Learning new technologies like using JavaScript for drag and drop behavior and

Ajax toolkit controls with little guidance.

The overall idea of doing this project is to get a real time experience. Learn new

technologies.

8. Conclusions

The ‘Online Shopping’ is designed to provide a web based application that would make

searching, viewing and selection of a product easier. The search engine provides an easy

and convenient way to search for products where a user can Search for a product

interactively and the search engine would refine the products available based on the

user’s input. The user can then view the complete specification of each product. They can

also view the product reviews and also write their own reviews. Use of Ajax components

would make the application interactive and prevents annoying post backs. Its drag and

drop feature would make it easy to use.

8.1 Limitations

This application does not have a built in check out process. An external checkout

package has to be integrated in to this application. Also users cannot save the shopping

carts so that they can access later i.e. they cannot create wish lists which they can access

later. This application does not have features by which user can set price ranges for

products and receive alerts once the price reaches the particular range.

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8.2 Scope for Future Work

The following things can be done in future.

• The current system can be extended to allow the users to create accounts and

save products in to wish list.

• The users could subscribe for price alerts which would enable them to receive

messages when price for products fall below a particular level.

• The current system is confined only to the shopping cart process. It can be

extended to have an easy to use check out process.

• Users can have multiple shipping and billing information saved. During

checkout they can use the drag and drop feature to select shipping and billing

information.

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9. References

• All about Microsoft controls in C#

http://www.msdn.microsoft.com/

• Wikipedia for various diagrams & testing methods

http://www.wikipedia.org/

• Cool text for Images and Buttons

http://cooltext.com/

• K-State Research Exchange for samples in report writing

http://krex.k-state.edu/dspace/handle/2097/959

• Smart Draw for drawing all the Diagrams used in this report.

http://www.smartdraw.com/

• Sample Ecommerce Application

http://www.NewEgg.com

• Ajax Toolkit controls

http://asp.net/ajax